Bills Posts

It’s 2130, it’s dark and I’ve just realised that I don’t have a recent picture of the garden.

The weather has been glorious, bright warm sunshine. We got out in the garden. Cut the grass, Elayne has been cutting back bushes. We filled the. Brown bin. It’ll annoy Elayne that the bin isn’t due to be emptied until a week on Tuesday.

It’s Mothering Sunday today – we. Knew that the chances of getting a table would be non-existent, so we didn’t try. But we did go to the garden centre hoping to get a hot meal – no chance we were too late, the servers was cold.

We came back and had Brains faggots, peas and potatoes. Lovely.

I went to Dorset today. It was lobvely to see the family. We had fish and chips for the chippy on South Street, that used to be my favourite after having been to the Rex (the cinema).. I’d get a pastie and chips – I used to like their pasties. Lunch was very nice.

It was lovely to have a wander around the town. I have no idea if I saw somebody I might have known. We reminisced about the different shops that have closed down or, indeed, may still be running. I even bought something in a shop that is celebrating its 100th anniversary of business this year.

We had a walk around the market on the quayside of the River Frome. These three ducks made me chuckle. They were a literal demonstration of the expression “Swimming against the tide” and staying perfectly still. They seemed entirely nonchalant about their zero progress.

This last picture is of St Mary’s Church – this is a special place for our family. Many memories, both happy and sad were created here.

As I type this, I’m trying not to fall asleep. I’ve done that usual Friday thing of leaving this too late.

I didn’t go for a walk this morning. Other than feeling tired I didn’t have a good excuse. It had been raining though.

After the washing machine broke down the repair man didn’t take the drum so I had a trip to the recycling centre this afternoon it was at 4pm. The traffic was bad.

Sorry, I’m rambling. Goodnight.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been walking around the cockle ponds and there has been an Egret feeding. They are very nervous birds and would normally fly away as soon as I got within about 40 yards. This morning, as the ponds were being emptied, this one was seriously focused on the bottom of the pond and completely ignored me. Even when I was within about 10 feet it didn’t budge and it was me that walked away rather than it flying off, which is the right way it should be.

Anyhow, last night, I made the effort to get to the latest council meeting The instructions say to arrive at the chambers by 1750. I had to rush and arrived at 1754, I really didn’t expect to get in, but luckily, one of the councillors was running almost late, and let me in. The meeting started at 1800.

I guess the main thing that was discussed was the Governments proposal for devolution, that is changing the local government structure, merging smaller authorities into bigger units. The council were against anysuch move, as were members of hte other parites.

In the end though it turned into one of hte shortest meetings I’ve been to yet, closing at 1825, not even half an hour. Still it was interesting, and I shall look to go to the next one.

The Camera Club held a Macro (close-up) session, so we took our cameras and macro lenses. The session was well attended and there were four table set up with different aspects that we could play with. The header picture is not really a macro picture,, but it is one of the best I’d taken.

I’m not making excuses but it was the first time I had really used the lens in anger. What becomes clear is that I need to practice – a lot.

It was good though that I had an opportunity to use the lens under controlled circumstances. Tomorrow’s post will be about tonight’s council meeting which I managed to attend.

We went to the Camera club this evening, we had an excellent session on Macro photography. Now, I did take some pictures, but I haven’t transferred them off the camera onto the computer. So tomorrows post will be about tonights activity, sorry about that.

Today’s header picture comes from an encounter on my morning walk. I wanted to buy a battery for my handheld anemometer, and as I turned to go in to the one shop that waas open at 6 in the morning, I encountered this little beauty standing in the doorway. Now, I honestly expected it either to go in to the shop or the shopkeeper to come out with something. Actually, the shopkeeper seemed a bit fed up with the fox, so I can’t help wondering if it is an opportunistic gatherer. I got my battery, and will be set up for the morning.

I don’t have a video for you this evening. I shot several clips this morning, and I’m really not happy with any of them. Tomorrow is #Breakfastclub day, so my little radio is on charge in preparation.

I got chatting to one of the dog walkers, at one point he thought that one of the swans was in trouble on the cockleponds. We were going to have a look and realised it was nest building – I don’t think it will be viable. They must nest somewhere ccloseby as we do see cygnets on the ponds, fairly mature ones though, not normally recently hatched.

I was a very pleasant walk if slightly frustrating in one respect.

Thumbnails are the small pictures that accompany typically a YouTube video, they are the advert for the video, and therefore the producer should attempt to make them as attractive as possible to entice you in to watch the video. The default if a thumbnail isn’t deliberately produced is to grab a random still from the video being submitted and use that, something YouTube does automatically.

I’ve known about thumbnails for quite a while, and I have to confess that I don’t produce my own – or at least I haven’t done. I may do so in future. Why am I writing about sommething like thumbnails when I’ve never bothered with them before? II noticed that after last night, when I posted a video as the header, no automatic thumbnail is showing – that may have happened before, but no recently, and I’ve not noticed.

I have to be honest with you and say that having posted a video here as I did yesterday has given me a bit of a bug. I’m keen to do it again. So I may post another sometime in the near future.

It’s private in the sense that if you have a llink, you can view it and share it, but people won’t find it.

It’s really not very exciting, but I did promise a video, and so here it is. The fact that I’ve added something to YouTube is, for me amazing. I do want to do more.

I should have done it last night, but I was really tired and just could not bring myself to engage with the YouTube publication process. Which actually, having just done it now isn’t really that bad.

It’s another short post tonight as I have left it a bit late, but if you are inclined to tell what you think about the video – is the quality of picture and sound OK?

One thing, if you know the area, you’ll note that i describe the route of the bus incorrectly. The order should be Lee-on-the-Solent and then Stubbington. Wasn’t thinking correctly, apologies for that.

It’s the weekend. Before i could do anything, I needed to sort out. Luckily, everything went smoothly.

It took me a bit of time to work out what i was going to do, and visiting the Apple Dumpling Bridge became a goal. One I didn’t achieve.

I did shoot a video, about two minutes worth. I won’t upload it now – to be honest, I’ve left it too late, and am too tired to engage with the youtube uploacd process.

I’ll try tomorrow – sorry.

Since buying the Insta360 flow Pro 2 gimbal for my birthday, I have been shhoting quite a few videos, practicing “speaking to the camera”. I have to say, that it is inot as easy as you might think. What I can say is that none of the videos I have shot will intentionally make their way onto YouTube, or here. Although tomorrow, I may post a short video here if it goes OK.

Why am I so adamant that I will not post videos that have been done to date? Mainly because they are not very good. There is one, though, that is three minutes long and isn’t an absolute disaster. I’ve been watching a fair few YouTube episodes made by people from the UK rather than the USA. The key differences are UK episodes are more relaxed meaning there isn’t the rush to get words out apparently without taking a breath.

The main problems I have are; 1. I do want to talk about the local area, but it doesn’t need to be a history lesson. there is a place for well-researched information, but mainly, when I speak to the camera, I go into a kind of stressed kind of reporter’s voice rather than sounding natural. My goal for tomorrow, then, is to produce 30 seconds to one-minute of video that I can post here.